Blacktown Hospital celebrates Speech Pathology Week

Blacktown and Mount Druitt hospitals’ speech pathology department celebrated Speech Pathology Week last week.

Speech Pathology Week (August 20-26) aimed to promote awareness of the impact communication and swallowing difficulties can have on people’s lives.

This year, the theme was Communication Access – everyone gets the message.

More than 1.1 million Australians have a communication or swallowing disorder – that is roughly the same number of Australians who live with diabetes and three times the number of Australians who suffer from dementia.

The Blacktown and Mount Druitt hospitals speech pathologists went on a hospital-wide road show to help spread the word about speech pathology to staff and patients, with games of charades!

Blacktown Hospital rehabilitation and geriatric speech pathologist Yris Simon Mendoza said even though the games were fun, they appeared to have a real impact on the people who participated.

“We really wanted to help people get a small glimpse into what it might be like to live with a communication or swallowing difficulty,” she said.

Nice work team!